RattleBag and Rhubarb

In Defense of Intersectionality

I wrote this primarily as a way to sort my ideas out. Feel free to skip. However do take a look below at the painter of the featured intersection: Wilfred Rembert. What a life! And what extraordinary works of art. A Defense of Intersectionality The legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 although the concept had been…

Continue Reading

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb, The Sex Wars

Intersectional Lunacy and Knee-Jerk Nonsense

 A bunch of angry shouty men showed up to protest the Standing for Women  Let Women Speak event in Leeds as is their wont when women gather anywhere to talk about their lives. Inspired by the barbarism of Hamas, this particular crew had a new mantra to add to their mindless repertoire of bleats : “From the river to the…

Continue Reading

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW2

Our Flag Stays Red – Communists and Snore Detectives at the Savoy

In Our Flag Stays Red (1948) Phil Piratin – the Communist Party MP for Mile End – wrote an account of the 1940 occupation of the Savoy Hotel. This is just one of the many stories I came across in the research for the Marienbad – my post about Fritz Stingl and his escape from Czechoslovakia in 1939. Fritz was…

Continue Reading

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb, The Sex Wars

Put Out More Flags

My heart sinks down when I behold A rainbow in the street. With the end of June, in sight, I’m hoping for a break from the corporate waterboarding of the rainbow flag and its ever-morphing journey toward meaninglessness and cultural oblivion. With all this “pride”, eleven months of shame might be a relief. I realize that this is more than…

Continue Reading

Books, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW2

What ho! George Orwell and Cancel Culture

Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in 1940. –George Orwell P.G.Wodehouse –…

Continue Reading

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Eat my leek!

As previously reported in Shakespeare has had enough, a random assortment of Shakespeare’s characters – disturbed and distressed by political leadership – got together to prepare for an intervention. I invited them over, which was probably a bit of a mistake as they were all eager to participate and the logistics of social distancing were a bit of a challenge.…

Continue Reading

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Shakespeare Has Had Enough

Disturbed and distressed by political leadership, a random assortment of Shakespeare’s characters got together to prepare for an intervention. And then they confronted the villain himself and gave him the what for. We’ll have to wait for the next act to see what happened next. 

Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Wisdom of the Ages

Looks like having government officials who are Ignorant and Stupid is nothing new. Chinese poet Su Tung-Po nailed it centuries ago.  I was browsing through the International Times for 1969 – the way one does. And there – amid the fevered, underground, counter-cultural world of macrobiotics, head shop ads, rock and roll, anarchy, activism, and psychedelia as seen from North…

Continue Reading

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Hopeful Signs

I am always a bit astonished when I see tRump signs at people’s houses. And I ask myself: “Who are these people? What on earth can they be thinking?” There’s three on our route to our usual walk  – not just signs of course, but mega flags trumpeting the household fascist tendencies, racism, and misogyny to the world. And looks…

Continue Reading

City and Country, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Anarchy in New York: The Mayhem Continues

As we know the tRump misadministration has – for reasons of its own – declared New York City to be a jurisdiction of anarchy, violence and property destruction. This is Part Two. Part One is here. The Justice Department declared New York City A place of Anarchy, violence and Property losses. Live from New York City where folks Continue Their…

Continue Reading

City and Country, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Anarchy in New York City

The US Department of ‘Justice’ declared this week that New York City — along with Portland and Seattle — to be a “jurisdiction permitting violence and destruction property.”  Allegedly our state and local government are permitting anarchy, violence, and destruction So of course I had to take a look. So far, this is what I can report: Weather: Warm, sunny,…

Continue Reading

Food, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

In the Salon with Gertrude Stein

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.– Gertrude Stein  As you know from my earlier post I have recently been chatting with Gertrude Stein about her life and particularly aspects of her work Tender Buttons (1914). This was all facilitated by my early acquaintance with…

Continue Reading

Books, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

COVIDIOTS 2020 and Hellish Trumpery

So many parallels between our current pandemic and the plague that swept through London in 1665, at least as described by Daniel Defoe in Journal  of the Plague Year.  It’s a novel, written many years later in – 1722 – by a remarkably talented fabulator. So always good to take it with a shovel of salt. But here’s one big…

Continue Reading

Art, Film, Photography, RattleBag and Rhubarb

From Minty to Moses – the Extraordinary Fierce and Fearless Harriet Tubman

In September we heard Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Oprah Winfrey at the Apollo in NYC. The topic was his first novel The Water Dancer and the ticket price included a copy of the book. The conversation was interesting – Oprah is really good at this kind of thing and she clearly loved the book. And so did I. It’s…

Continue Reading

Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Mustn’t Grumble

Mustn’t Grumble We mustn’t grumble We have wireless and cable And there’s food in the shops. Beyoncé had a birthday and the game is on tonight. We have work to do. And all the really bad things like weather and politics are a long way away so we don’t have to worry. And there’s always pizza delivery. We can still walk…

Continue Reading